VAR Panchayat

IoT Security

by VARINDIA 2017-04-07

Consider IoT security a discipline in every stage of a product development

With the proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT), it is expected that 25 billion devices are connected today, with 50 billion expected by 2020. With privacy being a significant concern, this huge number of connected devices presents an open field of opportunity for hackers to craft attacks which can steal important data or cause operational harm or instability.

IoT devices come in every shape and size. More often deeply embedded processors of low cost and power do not have the ability to offer a secured network transport or physical security that potentially can be an entry point into sensitive areas. Developers count on the non-mainstream development environment for embedded controllers and processors as an effective layer of

security. This simply is no longer the case as many of the development platforms are open source driven and the sophistication of the hackers often overshadow the competency of savvy developers. Security at the device development stage has to become a major factor and core competency of any developer.

IoT is also in the main stream when you consider everyday smartphones, yet another IoT device that is easily exploited with known vulnerabilities. Often the smartphone manufacturer is slow to keep up with updates or in a fragmented OS ecosystem such as Android many updates are never applied leaving phones open to attack. iOS also has its own vulnerabilities and is never immune to attack and to think so is a grave mistake with potentially huge consequences.

IoT is ever developing and new security methods and approaches are being developed continuously. The key point is to consider security early on in the development phase and make it a discipline in every stage of a product development which continues well after product release. A dedicated team needs to be tasked in any organization to understand and mitigate the potential risks. We are all facing a significant problem with security in Internet of Things and only a comprehensive program and awareness will help keep our data safe.